News spreads fast in the Texas Medical Center. Surgeon Dr. Eric Haas often has surgeons who want to shadow him for a day to observe how the surgery works.

Jennifer Gimon knew her colon needed to be removed when she found out she had a 100 percent chance of getting colon cancer. But she didn’t want to suffer through a six-month recovery like her aunt did when hers was removed 20 years ago.
Back then, her aunt, diagnosed with colon cancer, was 42 in the hospital and had to be fed through an intravenous drip for two weeks. Gimon’s aunt took six months after the surgery to return back to work.
“I was a ticking time bomb,” Gimon, who is 43, said. “Within 10 years I would have had cancer. But being the owner of a business makes it hard to even plan a vacation. I couldn’t afford to be out of work for long.”

The good news for Gimon, surgeons today like Eric Haas, M.D., colorectal surgeon at Colorectal Surgical Associates, can make a single incision into a patient’s bellybutton and remove the colon from the site, leaving behind only a tiny scar.

Haas, using this technique, removed Gimon’s entire colon. Within two weeks she was back to work. Like many other patients, she avoided the need to receive a colostomy. Laparoscopy allowed Haas to “reconnect” her just an inch of incision as opposed to a foot long incision using traditional general surgery.